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How was the Sunnah recorded and documented?

Executive Summary

How was the Prophetic Sunnah recorded and documented? Was it only an oral tradition, with no written record? Was it only documented hundreds of years after the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) departure from this world?

It is unfortunate that many are still unaware of the actual answers to these important questions. In order to help address this, we have translated chapter 20 from Part 2 (The Nature of Revelation and the Revealed ‘Dhikr’) of Kitāb at-Tawḥeed: A’sās al-Islām wa Ḥaqeeqat-at-Tawḥeed, by Professor Muḥammad bin Abdallah al-Mas’ari.

This chapter provides a tour de force of how the Prophetic Sunnah was documented and recorded. Citing extensive primary material, Professor al-Mas’ari demonstrates that the Prophetic Sunnah wasn’t simply an oral tradition devoid of written record. Rather, there was extensive documentation and written recording from the earliest era of Islam. The publishing was undertaken in various distinctive junctures.

The Prophetic Sunnah is revelation by its very nature and as argued elsewhere in Kitāb at-Tawḥeed is part of the Dhikr, protected according to its unique nature. Therefore, there isn’t anything which is missing or contains gaps. As a corpus it has been recorded and documented.